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Theseus the King in Fifth-Century Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

John N. Davie
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Extract

Of all Greek heroes, Theseus, few would deny, has the greatest claim to enshrine all the best qualities of the Athenian citizen, not least in his championship of the demos, celebrated by poets and painters alike of the classical period. It might seem at first sight contradictory to find in the same period in Athenian history an equally flourishing tradition concerning Theseus the heroic-age king. This ‘contradiction', however, as it might be perceived in abstract terms by a modern constitutional historian, would not have been felt so acutely, if at all, by a fifth-century Greek, for whom the ideas of monarchic rule and the heroic age were fundamentally connected. Our response to this type of problem owes more to the analytical method of such later works as Aristotle's Politics, with its thorough categorization of constitutions, and there is always the danger that we may impose on the Greek mythological imagination of the fifth century an unwarranted rigidity that fails to reflect the greater plasticity of the classical Greek mind. A review of the Theseus legend in fifth-century Athens reveals the extent to which such flexibility of attitude existed and throws some light on the classical attitude to one-man rule.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , April 1982 , pp. 25 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1982

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References

Notes

1. The literature on Theseus is vast. The basic study of the myth in its Athenian context remains that of Herter, Hans, ‘Theseus der Athener’, Rh. Mus. 88 (1939), 244–86, 289–326Google Scholar but cf. more recently Webster, T. B. L., Potter and Patron in Classical Athens (London, 1972), pp. 82ffGoogle Scholar. and Henle, J., Greek Myths. A Vase Painter's Notebook (Bloomington and London, 1973), pp. 78–86Google Scholar. For representations of Theseus on pots cf. Brommer, F., Vasenlisten zur griechischen Heldensage (Marburg, 1973 3), pp. 210–58Google Scholar.

2. Nilsson, M. P., Cults, Myths, Oracles and Politics in Ancient Greece (Lund, 1951), pp. 55 ffGoogle Scholar.

3. The contrast is effectively brought out on a cup of soon after 510 in which the Euergides Painter depicts Herakles and the Nemean Lion between representations of Theseus with the Minotaur and Theseus with Prokrustes (Beazley, J. D., Attic Black-Figure Vase Painters (Oxford, 1956), p. 89, no. 21)Google Scholar.

4. Theseus had already appeared, of course, in Homer (Il. 1.265, Od. 11.321–5, 631) but hardly as a figure of great importance. Cf. on the Bakchylides poems and their probable dates of composition Severyns, A., Bacchylide (Liége, 1933), pp. 56–9Google Scholar.

5. Beazley, , Attic Red-Figure Vase Painters2 (Oxford, 1963), 318.1Google Scholar.

6. Plut, . Thes. 28.1Google Scholar; cf. Arist. Poetics 1451a20 on two later authors of epics on Theseus and, later still, the long-suffering Juvenal (Sat. 1.2).

7. Mus. Helv. 3 (1946), 65 ff. and 89 ffGoogle Scholar. On the metopes themselves cf. Richter, G. M. A., The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks (Oxford, 1950), pp. 126 ffGoogle Scholar. She successfully refutes French attempts to date the Treasury to just after 490 B.C. as a celebration of Marathon.

8. RA (1972), 57–72, further developed in JHS 95 (1975), 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Webster, , op. cit., pp. 82–6Google Scholar; cf. Herter, , ‘Griechische Geschichte im Spiegel der Theseussage’, Die Antike 17 (1941), 222Google Scholar.

10. JHS 2 (1881), 61Google Scholar.

11. Cf. Kardara, C. P., AJA 55 (1951), 293–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Cf. Webster, , op. cit., p. 85Google Scholar; Paus. 1.17.6, Plut, . Thes. 36.1Google Scholar, Kimon 8.6. For similar cases of the political recovery of a hero's bones, cf. Hdt. 1.67.2–68.6 (Orestes) and Aelian, , V.H. 12.64 (Alexander the Great)Google Scholar.

13. Cf. Lowy, E., Polygnot (Vienna, 1929) i. 45 ffGoogle Scholar.

14. Cf. , Eur.Her. 619Google Scholar, Σ Aristoph, . Knights 1368Google Scholar. For illustrations of shield-band cf. Schefold, , Myth and Legend in Early Greek Art (London, 1966), p. 69, fig. 24Google Scholar.

15. Cf. Jacoby, F., FGrHist 328F 18(a)Google Scholar.

16. The author of this piece of ingenuity may have been Euripides himself, as Wilamowitz suggested in his edition of the Herakles(rev. Abel, 1933), p. 110. cf. Eur, . Her. 619, 1169, 1324 ffGoogle Scholar.

17. Cf. Aristoph, . Horai 567 (Hall and Geldart)Google Scholar, Pherekrates, Dulodidask. 1.159Google Scholar.

18. Beazley, , The Development of Attic Black-Figure (Berkeley, 1951), p. 68, p1. 27.3Google Scholar. Cf. on this famous fragment the remarks of Boardman in AJA 82 (1978), 15Google Scholar ff. who suggests that Exekias may be ‘anticipating the new emphasis which an Athens free of the tyrants will give the hero'. Cf. also Robertson, Martin in JHS 74 (1954), 230CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. Cf. Eur, . Suppl. 353Google Scholar, , Soph.O.C. 913Google Scholar(justice and equality before the law); Eur, . Suppl. 438ff.Google Scholar, Hipp. 421 ff. (freedom of speech.) Cf. further for this view of Theseus in the fourth century and later, Isocr, . Hel. 35–6Google Scholar, Panath. 128–9; Dem. 59.74–5; Philoch. fr. 94, , Cic.de leg. 2.2.5Google Scholar, Valer. Max. 5.3.3, Paus. 1.22.3.

20. Cf. Thuc. 2.15 for the best surviving account of this. Plutarch's account makes it quite clear that the eupatrids filled the political offices under Theseus' new politeia. Cf. further on the origins of the tradition making Theseus the founder of the aristocratic state, Sarkady, J., AAntHung 17 (1969), 1 ffGoogle Scholar.

21. This is true only of the early period of Atthidography, which is our main concern here (the work of Hellanikos and Kleidemos). Solon is, of course, a figure of great importance for the Atthidographers but not until the second half of the fourth century does he begin to oust Kleisthenes from his position as ‘third man’ in the development of the Athenian constitution. Cf. further Jacoby, , Atthis. The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford, 1949), pp. 77 ff., 153 ffGoogle Scholar.

22. Cf. , Virg.Georg. 2.383Google Scholar, Prop. 3.21.24, Statius, Theb. 4.81Google Scholar, Martial 4.13.4, 13.104.1. The portrayal of Theseus as the faithless lover, familiar from the lament of Catullus' Ariadne (64.132 ff.) appears to be later than Euripides. (Cf. Prop. 1.3.1 ff., Ovid, AA 3.459Google Scholar, Fasti 3.460, Chaucer, , Legende of Good Women 2459—60, 2545—6). Shakespeare's ‘Duke Theseus’ though drawn as a typical Renaissance prince, has far more in common with the heroic figure of fifth-century art and literature. (Cf. A Midsummer Night's Dream 1.1.119–20, 5.1.44–51)Google Scholar.

23. The general judgement on monarchy in the fifth century was certainly a negative one though examples of a more positive attitude can be found. Cf. Davie, J. N., G&R 26 (1979), 160ffGoogle Scholar.

24. Cf. Seager, Robin, Historia 16 (1967), 6 ffGoogle Scholar. and MacDowell, on Andokides, , De Mysteriis 97Google Scholar.

25. The comic predecessors of Aristophanes provide a uniform tradition, lampooning Perikles as the democratic politician who rose from stasis(either the downfall of Kimon and the Areiopagos in 462 or the struggle with Thoukydides, son of Melesias, ending in the latter's ostracism, 443) to become ‘tyrant’ of Athens. Cf. Kratinos, Cheirones fr. 240/1Google Scholar, Thrattai fr. 71 (cf. here Aristoph, . Ach. 530)Google Scholar; Telekleides fr. 44, fr. adesp. 60 (Perikles’ supporters called ‘the new Peisistratids’). On the notion of ‘Perikles monarchos’ developed from Thoukydides 2.65.10, cf. Morrison, J. S., JHS 70 (1950), 76–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with Gomme's criticisms ad loc.

26. Cf. Suda 3, Aristeas, ed. Wendland, (Aristeae ad Philocratem epistola, 1900), 36, 265, 290 andGoogle Scholar, further, Tarn, W. W.Alexander the Great (Cambridge, 1948), ii. 66Google Scholar.

27. Pl. Rep. 341a–2e, 344d–7e; Arist. Pol. 1295a15 ff., 1310b40–1311a8; cf. Soph, . O.C. 887–1043Google Scholar, Eur, . Suppl. 399–598Google Scholar.

28. Cf. Cic. Ad Quint. Fratr. 1.1.24: ‘Ac mihi quidem videntur hue omnia esse referenda iis qui praesunt aliis, ut ii, qui erunt eorum in imperio, sint quam beatissimi’ and Petrarch's advice to his patron, Francesco di Carrara, to love his subjects as his children, using only goodwill (‘benevolentia’) towards them, (Epistolae Seniles 14.1). The idea of the king as the good shepherd, itself Homeric, may have reached Greece via the Orient, to judge from the frequency of the notion in Babylonian and Assyrian texts. Cf. further Gadd, C. T., ‘Ideas of Divine Rule in the Ancient East’, The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy, 1945, (1948), 38 fGoogle Scholar. Of the Alexandrian poets it is Theokritos who most anticipates the ideal of kingship realized later in the Renaissance courts of Urbino and Florence. Cf. Id. 14.61 f., 17.13–15.